6 Keywords: Colour Blindness, Colour Deficiency, Colour Background, Colour Text, Colour Explorer, Eyepilot

"I have white text on a black background.  I have it the same as you on your laptop here: you don’t put a background colour behind the text.  I find it’s easier to read."

"If you have a colour deficiency, or struggle in situations with colour overload then the following programs may be helpful.

ColourExplorer

ColourExplorer is a FREE download from MicrolinkPC.  It allows users to change the colours of Microsoft’s window/explorer tabs, tables and text fonts. This is specially useful when text on a webpage may be green, and the background table is red. Furthermore, Colour Explorer allows the user to change text in text field boxes to any colour, useful if you prefer to read white text on a black background (shown in Figure 2) or require a high contrast (shown in Figure 3).  

 Figure 2 – Black background/white text

Figure 3 – High contrast

eyePilot

A further program available is eyePilot developed by an American company called Tenebraex. This program has a vast number of features compared to ColourExplorer but is not free, costing around £19. The software does however, come with a free trial (30 days) allowing you to see if it best suits your requirements. To explain the program simply, eyePilot uses a ‘floating window’ that filters the content inside its own application window. The programs’ functionality allows you to change the hue of pictures making them easier to view if you have a colour deficiency (see Figure 4). The software also allows the user to select colours by their name (as shown in Figure 5). 

Figure 4 – eyePilot hue changing function.

Figure 5 – eyePilot naming function.